


Requiem

by commoncomitatus



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-18 23:31:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1446964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lulu's thoughts as she prepares for her third pilgrimage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiem

It is difficult to look at Yuna and not see Ginnem.

On the surface of it, they are nothing alike. Yuna is young and full of hope, blithe and yet unsullied by wisdom and experience. Ginnem was older, beautiful and intelligent, quietly contemplative and occasionally stoic. She was subdued, chilled where Yuna is a firelight of wide-eyed optimism. Where Yuna dashes into everything head-first, eyes on the stars even when she dreams, Ginnem was always quiet and cautious. It didn’t help her, didn’t help either of them, but that was who she was. Indeed, in everything but name — _summoner_ — she and Yuna are nothing alike. 

And yet, for all that, it is difficult for Lulu to look at the exuberant young woman she’s known since childhood and not see the summoner she failed.

It wasn’t always this way. Not so long ago, Yuna was simply Yuna, the younger sister that Lulu cherished and tried to protect as best she could. She was little more than a child, a little girl with starry-eyed visions of the woman she might one day become, lit up by hopes and dreams of becoming her father’s daughter in every possible way, of one day growing into a summoner just as he was. She dreamed, but that was all it was: a dream. For Lulu, that much older and imagining herself a little wiser, it came as second nature for her to cast those dreams aside, to shake her head and believe that Yuna would outgrow those urges once she learned what it truly meant to be a summoner.

She didn’t, though. She clung to her aspirations as strong and steadfast as her father, and showed talent enough to make those aspirations real. She is a summoner now, and she is to embark on her pilgrimage, and there is nothing that Lulu can do to stop it. With that, at least, she has made her peace. But knowing and accepting it does not make it any easier to look at this once-innocent young child without seeing what those aspirations will cost them both.

Yuna has always been a cherished part of her life. The little girl, grown now into a capable young woman, a constant and much-loved companion. Lulu loves her deeply, and would do anything to keep her safe just as she would have done anything to protect her lady Ginnem. But, of course, ‘anything’ is so often not enough, and it hurts to look at Yuna and see only a dark and painful end to the same terrible path. It is difficult to be with her now, difficult to guide her and to encourage her, difficult to do anything at all.

It is difficult because Yuna is headstrong and stubborn, because she will not listen to even the sagest advice, because she is so sure that she knows everything, because she is so desperate to bear her father’s name with the honour it deserves. She has chosen her own path and no amount of reason will sway her from it, and that is a burden that Lulu must bear again and again every time their eyes meet. It is difficult because Yuna is so very young, and it is difficult because Braska’s blood flows in her. It is difficult because she is not Ginnem, and difficult because she shares her path.

It is difficult for all of them. For Wakka, it is difficult to see the laughing little girl he grew up with becoming a strong and capable young woman. It is difficult for him to see the courageous young woman who would take all of Spira’s sorrows on her shoulder and remember the little bit of a thing who would cry when she skinned her knees or laugh until her breath came short at the silly faces he would make to cheer her up. It is difficult for Wakka to accept what he has to do, just as it is difficult for Lulu, but it is difficult for him because he does not want to understand, where it is difficult for her because she already does.

Lulu remembers Ginnem. She remembers a young woman with beautiful eyes, and a courageous summoner with fire in her heart. She remembers her lady, and it cuts like a blade to see her hopes and dreams reflected in Yuna’s young and mismatched eyes. In many ways, Yuna is still a child; beyond all doubt, she is intelligent and courageous, but she is incredibly young as well, and it breaks Lulu’s heart to see her trying to grow up too quickly. It breaks her heart to see how willingly Yuna would give up the gift of youth, how readily she would squander that precious innocence. It breaks her heart to remember that she too was once so desperate to grow up.

She cannot undo her own undoing. She cannot go back and tell her younger self to stay in Besaid, to stay where it is safe and warm. She cannot tell that foolish young woman to cast aside the fluttering in her heart when she sees her lady, and the firelight of resolve to keep her safe. She cannot tell herself that she is a fool, a blithe and ignorant child, no more than she could turn around and tell Yuna the same thing now.

This will be Yuna’s first and only pilgrimage. A part of Lulu hopes that it will end as Father Zuke’s did, with a peaceful revelation on the vast plains of the Calm Lands. It is the best she can hope for, the only sliver of optimism she has left, the idealistic dream that Yuna will find a different calling, a more peaceful one. It saddens her to think that way, to know that a life of isolation and worship in one of the outlying temples is the greatest outcome she can hope for. Certainly, it’s a better fate for Yuna than any of the others, death and destruction for the sake of a few minutes’ freedom for the world she loves. There is no happy ending for a summoner, Lulu knows, and it hurts to think of going through that. Once more, she finds herself thinking of Ginnem, of bright eyes and a brighter smile, and it is all she can do to keep from weeping.

Yuna deserves more than that. She deserves more than a soft-hearted guardian who cannot tell her apart from another, who is so distracted by her broken heart that she cannot do her job. She deserves a guardian who will do their duty to the best of their ability, a guardian who has that ability in the first place. She deserves a guardian who will protect and guide her, who will keep her focused and keep her safe, a guardian who is not afraid of loss. She deserves a better guardian than Lulu.

She deserves a better guardian than Wakka, too, which is no consolation. Wakka did his duty with Zuke, at least to a point, but none of them were in the right frame of mind for that pilgrimage and its end was a painful reflection of their individual failings. They had both lost Chappu, the wound so recent and still so open, but that wasn’t why Wakka was distracted. His thoughts were on the game, his wretched blitzball, and Lulu remembers her anger every time he let his attention slip. She would have understood if it was his brother causing his distraction, if grief and anger had coupled in him to make something weak, but it was not like that at all. Wakka is a boy in a man’s body, quick to distraction and quicker to foolishness. He is not the kind of guardian than Yuna needs, any more than she herself is.

Wakka frustrates her. Lulu remembers the look on his face when Zuke decided to give up his pilgrimage, how thoroughly he failed to hide his relief, how eager he was to get back to Besaid and start playing that silly game once more. She still feels angry thinking about it, though she knows it’s hypocritical of her. Because, in truth, wasn’t she just as relieved as he was? Didn’t she breathe the same sigh of relief when Zuke turned away from the path of a summoner? Wasn’t she every bit as delighted as Wakka to learn that she could go home so soon, and this time without any blood on her hands? Didn’t it make her heart sing too to know that this time there would be no loss?

It shames her to think of it. Zuke was nothing like Ginnem, but still she had felt the ever-present barb of memory cutting into her with every step she took on that second ill-fated pilgrimage. The places were all the same, the sights not much changed from the first, the journey so painfully similar. The ending was different, of course, but until then every step was a reminder of what might happen, how it might end, the loss that might come. Every step a memory whispered on the wind, every breath an echo of Ginnem and the fact that Lulu had failed to protect her. She resented Wakka, but still she found herself grateful for his presence; she was grateful that this time there was someone to share the burden, to share the responsibility and the struggles. If she failed, at least this time there was someone to fall back on. As it turned out, she didn’t need him, but it was a comfort to know that he was there, that someone was.

And here they is again, about to embark on another pilgrimage with another summoner. This time, though, it’s not Zuke, an old man that neither of them truly know, but Yuna, as close to family as either of them have left. For Wakka, it is the first time, the first pilgrimage that meant something to him beyond the thirst to avenge his brother, to strike a blow against Sin. For Lulu, it is her second, and as she thinks of it, the differences between them, she feels the ache inside her again, just as sharp and brutal as it was the first time, with Ginnem.

Yuna is nothing like Ginnem. Lulu knows that, and she has reminded herself of the fact a thousand times in the past few weeks. Yuna is not Ginnem. She is not her lady, and the love that fills her heart when she looks at this new young summoner is completely different to the feeling that swelled in her when she looked upon Ginnem. But for all those differences, it is still love. Love is love, no matter the species, and the thought of losing Yuna cuts just as deep as the memory of Ginnem’s broken body or the horror of hearing about Chappu. Different as it is, Lulu cares for Yuna, just as she cared for them, if not in the same way.

She thinks of Yuna as a sister, a sweet young thing that is hers to protect and nurture. The way she smiles to think of her is different to the way she blushes to think of Ginnem or looks away when Wakka speaks of Chappu. They, at least, were similar enough in the way she loved them, and both of their names lodge in her chest like bones caught in her throat, choking her.

They are both gone, Ginnem and Chappu, the two truest souls she has ever known. Thinking of them makes her pulse quicken, her heart stop, and her eyes sting. They are both dead, both stolen from her by Sin, in one way or another, and is it any wonder that she hates the way Wakka clings to his foolish and futile hopes? Is it any wonder that she resents him for his blithe optimism, for his stupidity and his refusal to accept the truth? Is it any wonder that she loathes him when he tells her that Chappu might still be alive? Where is the comfort in that? She wants to beat him for his stupidity, curse him for his idealism, and damn him for believing it.

Where was that idealism when Ginnem was dead and Lulu was grieving? She could find no comfort, no respite in childish daydreams, and by the time Chappu joined her in death, she had cast off completely the fetters of hope. It is unfair, she thinks, that Wakka can shroud himself in his idealism and leave her shivering alone in the cold of reality. Ginnem and Chappu are both in the same place now, such as it is. That is the only comfort for her, the only idealistic prayer. That is all she has to keep her warm at night, the only thing she can cling to. While Wakka watches the sky for some sign of his lost brother and loses himself in visions of a future where they are reunited, all Lulu can do is pray that Chappu and Ginnem have found their peace together on the Farplane. It is no comfort at all, and she resents Wakka all the more deeply for that.

Grief is a terrible thing, but it is so much worse when faced alone. Ginnem was more than a loss; she was a failure. When Lulu returned from that first ill-fated pilgrimage alone, it was her fault. Her doing. She alone was to blame for Ginnem’s death, and the mourning ran all the more deeply to see the way her friends and peers would turn their faces away at the sight of her. _You were her guardian. You were supposed to protect her. If she failed Spira, it’s because you failed her._ That was the truth, and though they never said it to her face, she knew what they were thinking. They did not need to say it; even without words, she could hear the truth resonating in her head as clear and depthless as the Hymn of the Fayth. 

Maybe that’s why it was so much easier with Chappu. She cannot blame herself for what happened to him, and neither can anyone else. When she looks into the eyes of friends and aquaintances, this time she sees only sympathy. That in itself is strange, she supposes, that she of all people would welcome sympathy. Lulu has always been more comfortable with accusation than empathy, and if she had been with anyone else on her first pilgrimage, she would probably have welcomed their pointed fingers and angry eyes. Judgement lights the fire insides her, strengthens the ice around her heart; it reminds her that she does not need approval for anything she does, and it bolsters her confidence to grow beyond what they see in her. But it wasn’t anyone else; it was Ginnem. Her summoner, her lady. The guilt is heavy on her, even without their help, and the fire that those angry eyes ignited in her was destructive and cruel.

It is not that way with Chappu. It doesn’t matter that there are very few differences in what the two meant to her, that she carries them in the same place within her heart, that she still feels the same pulses when she thinks of either of them. It doesn’t matter that she loved them both equally, that her heart belonged to them both. None of that matters, because Lulu is not responsible for Chappu’s death. There is no anger in their eyes this time, and they do not look away from her now. They smile tragically instead, touch her shoulder, brush her arm, tell her that it will get better, that the grief will pass, that she will learn to love again.

She knows that, of course. She did once already.

Lulu loves easily. It is difficult for some, like Wakka, to believe, much less accept, but it is true just the same. She may not show it in the same way that he does, with his own arms and his loud voice and that childlike enthusiasm he applies so liberally to everything he touches. She is not like him at all. It is easy for him to show his affection, easy for him to laugh and smile, to crinkle his eyes and the corners of his mouth, to touch and be touched in kind. Affection comes easily to Wakka, but love is something that eludes him. He feels a lot, and often, but not with the kind of potency that Lulu does. He likes everyone, but the only person he truly loved was his brother.

If this is how he responds to the death of those he loves — really, truly loves, with all of his heart — then Lulu is glad that he does not love as easily as she does.

But then, it is no coincidence that she loved Chappu as well, is it? It is not by chance that she fell into her arms when she did, that her heart found solace in the rhythm of his. He is inexplicably linked with the Lady Ginnem, and always will be, no matter how hard she tries to keep them distinct and separate. Would she have been so quick to return his advances, awkward and clumsy as they were, if her heart wasn’t still awash in its own pain, still feeling the wound so open and raw? Would she have tried a little harder to resist his charms if she wasn’t torn asunder by loneliness and guilt?

She did love him; that much she knows, but still it makes her feel terrible to let herself wonder, to see his face in her mind and remember the woman who came before. He was a boy, older than Yuna but younger in heart, so far removed from Ginnem and her quiet severity; the difference between them is significant, and it went a long way to mending what little remained of Lulu’s heart after that first awful pilgrimage. And in its own way, his death too brought her a kind of solace, the cold comfort that comes with not being guilty. She loved him, in her own way, just as she loved Ginnem. But there is a link there that she cannot ignore, and when she lets herself think of it, she finds that she cannot look his brother in the eye.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons they argue so. Because they do. About Chappu, about Yuna, about anything either of them can think of. They argue for so many reasons; it is impossible to keep them all straight, but perhaps that inexplicable link between Chappu and Ginnem is a part of it. Lulu cannot turn away from the part of her that has lost twice where he has only lost one, the part of her that still finds it difficult to separate the young boy with Wakka’s smile from the young woman who died before she had a chance to be sacrificed. She cannot keep them distinct in her mind, and that means that she cannot help thinking of Ginnem every time Wakka gazes at the sky in search of Chappu. Every time he forces her to remember that he will not come back, he forces her to remember that she won’t either.

And so, they fight. She is cruel and he is stubborn, and they fight because it is easier to fight than to talk. It is easier to fight than to understand, easier for her to be angry than sad and easier for him to refuse reason than to accept it. It upsets Yuna, and they have all lost count of how many times she’s begged them to stop, to make peace for her sake if not for their own.

Sometimes, she can’t deny, it’s tempting to do just that. To simply lie down and let Wakka’s worthless optimism wash over her like it does over Yuna, to let herself be as deluded as he is, to try and believe his nonsense dreams, to close her eyes and imagine that Chappu is still out there somewhere, that he’ll come back one day with that grin on his face, so like his brother’s and yet so different. _Had you worried, didn’t I?_ She can almost hear the words, if she lets herself believe in them.

But she cannot. She is not like Wakka. She has seen and known too much, and all the wishing in Spira will not take from her the things she’s known, the things she’s seen. That makes her angry. Wakka never had to see his brother’s broken body; Lulu didn’t see it either, but that doesn’t matter because she already knows what a broken body looks like. She saw what happened to her lady summoner, her Ginnem. She saw what the fiends did to her, the terrible fate that she should have protected her from. She has seen the face of death, and once it’s seen it cannot be forgotten.

Wakka has never looked death in the eye as she has. He has only heard about it from inside the safety of his blitzball bubble. He is older than Chappu, older than Lulu, but he is innocent in a way that she is not, and will never be again.

She resents him. It’s unfair, and she knows that, but that doesn’t make it less true. She hates that he was spared the sight of his brother’s broken body, hates that he has never seen the things she has, hates herself for wishing that he never will. She hates how he turns away from the truth, hates that he still can. She hates him for falling so easily into his own idealism because she cannot do the same. Those precious delusions of him will do her no good, and she resents him for the peace he finds when he looks up at those hateful skies.

Chappu was Wakka’s brother, and his death marked the first time that Wakka truly lost something. Lulu knows that she should be more understanding, that she should realise he will accept it in his own time, that she should support him and empathise. She should be more like Yuna, she knows, sweet and compassionate, ever putting other people’s pain ahead of her own. She should be, but she is not. She has never been compassionate and ‘sweet’ does not suit her at all. Besides, she is younger than Wakka, and she has grown up so much faster; her patience died when her heart was broken for the first time, when she lost her lady and returned to a world turned grey with guilt and blame. She doesn’t need to see Chappu’s body to know what it looked like, battered and broken beyond recognition, and she resents too the fact that Wakka will meet his own death never knowing what his brother looked like as he met his.

Chappu knew about Ginnem, of course, what they were and how Lulu felt about her. He knew why she joined her on that ill-fated pilgrimage, why it was so important that she be by her lady’s side until the end. He knew the whole time, before and after, and was nothing but respectful. Even when she let her thoughts wander at the most inopportune moments, whispering her lady’s name while lying in his bed, still he understood, and still he respected the memories that haunted her. He asked if she was all right, and kissed the tears away with tenderness and shared sorrow. He respected her memory, and Lulu loved him all the more for that.

There is a painful kind of resonance between the two, how she loved them and how they died. Both met their end in the line of duty and both were mourned by those who had failed to protect them. Lulu thinks of the other Crusaders on that fateful mission, the ones who came back alive, and wonders if they hate themselves for surviving like she does. She cannot even see her own reflection in the mirror any more without hearing Ginnem’s voice, discordant and distorted as though from the Farplane, demanding to know why she is still alive, why the guardian survived when the summoner fell; she was the one who pledged her life to protect her lady’s, so why is she still breathing while Ginnem lies dead and cold in that wretched cave? Do the Crusaders feel the same when they remember Chappu? Do they toss and turn at night, hearing his voice haunting their dreams, blaming them for his demise? Or have they made peace, accepting the loss as payment for the lives they saved when his was lost?

That, she supposes, is another burden for her to bear, though in a different way. Every death since Ginnem’s pilgrimage is on her conscience too, as surely as her lady’s, though none of them hurt as deeply as Chappu’s. It is her fault that Ginnem failed to reach Sin, her fault that she died, and anyone else who dies because of Sin is her fault too. She was her guardian. She was the one who should have protected her, the one who should have made sure that Ginnem’s pilgrimage was successful. If someone had to die in that wretched place, it should have been her; that was why she was there, wasn’t it? That’s what a guardian does, isn’t it?

But no. She was too young, too foolish. She was too much in love, and where she should have been alert to the dangers around them, all she could see was her summoner, her lady, her Ginnem. All she could see was the most beautiful woman she had ever known and the most accomplished summoner she could ever imagine. She was smitten and she was thoroughly stupid. In so many ways, she was just like Wakka, unable to accept the simple truth because the delusion was safer and so much prettier. Of course Ginnem would defeat Sin; she could defeat anything.

Lulu’s idealism cost her dearly, and cost Ginnem dearer still, and that’s another reason why she can’t help resenting Wakka for indulging his delusions that Chappu is still out there somewhere. Doesn’t he know the price of all that hope? Doesn’t he see that accepting loss is so much safer than pretending it’s not happening?

She wants to take him by the shoulders and shake the optimism out of him. How can he expect to be a good guardian for Yuna if he will not accept what needs to be done? He has been a guardian before; he knows what happens to summoners who reach the end of their pilgrimage; what good is he to Yuna if he cannot even accept a death that has already happened?

But then, truth be told, she is not much better herself. The thought of adding Yuna to her list of losses frightens her more than she can articulate, and she has spent almost as many sleepless nights worrying about that as she has dreaming of the two she lost already. She was lucky with Father Zuke, and so was Wakka. He took the easy way out, and in turn granted the same to them. But Yuna has more drive and determination than he ever had, and somewhere deep in her soul Lulu knows that she will not turn back as he did. She will not allow any of them, even herself, to tread the safe path. She will go to Zanarkand, Lulu knows, and she will defeat Sin. She knows it; deep inside her, she knows it, and it terrifies her to think of Wakka being there, to think of all that blithe optimism shattering in him at an inopportune time, to see him falter and fail in the moment when he is most needed. She is so very frightened of seeing him become what she was.

Zuke’s pilgrimage was difficult for all three of them. Chappu’s death hung over the journey like a funeral shroud, a name unspoken and a thought unvoiced, taking a heavy toll on Wakka and weakening Zuke’s resolve. For Lulu, it had seemed fair, if cruel, that her second pilgrimage as a guardian was branded by death even before it began. It was a kind of penance, she’d felt, for what had happened to Ginnem, a reminder of all the ways she’d failed. As bitter and angry as she was about Chappu, still she could not silence the voice inside of her that saw his death as a kind of omen, a promise of smoother waters up ahead. It was good, she thought, that she had received her share of loss in advance this time; it let her hold out hope that the pilgrimage to come would be bloodless because so much had been shed before it even started.

In its own way, it was. There was no blood, no death, no pain. The guilt on her shoulders is light and effortless next to the agony she feels when she thinks of Ginnem. If they failed to keep Zuke on his path, at least when he left it he had a chance at contentment. That’s more than Lulu can say for her lady Ginnem. Indeed, it’s more than Yuna can say for her father, Lord Braska. The guilt is still there, of course, but it’s different. Softer, less brutal. Pain tempered by shame and simplicity, and that makes it bearable.

Wakka wrings his hands, even now, blaming himself for being distracted, for being too happy to get back to his precious blitzballs, for not trying harder to talk Zuke into continuing his pilgrimage. Lulu doesn’t waste time on such thoughts, but she has more on her shoulders already. For Wakka, it is the first time he’s had any kind of responsibility at all, so of course he takes it more personally. For him, it’s as close to failure as he’s ever come outside the blitzball bubble, and it takes every ounce of strength Lulu has in her to keep from shaking him by the throat for his ignorance. He does not know what failure is. He doesn’t understand this any more than he understands the truth of Chappu’s death, and it is maddening. He makes her so angry, but for the sake of his brother’s memory she holds the ire at bay. She lets him foam and twitch, lets him rant and rave and blame himself, lets him do whatever he wants. She lets him talk about how completely he failed, and does not tell him how blessed he is to end his first pilgrimage with no blood on his hands.

For the first time, she allows herself to wonder about the journey to come. Yuna’s pilgrimage, her first and only. Wakka’s second, and Lulu’s third. Is it such a terrible thing that she finds herself wishing it will end as peacefully as Zuke’s, with a quiet change of heart in the midst of a great plain? She knows it will not happen that way, knows Yuna too well to hope that it might, but still she finds that she aches for it. She wishes that Yuna could just be a little less stubborn, a little less righteous, a little less _good_. She aches in her heart and in her soul, in all the parts of herself that have loved and lost. She wishes that Yuna could understand, and prays that she never will.

She cannot lose Yuna too. She has lost so much already. Her lady, her boy, her heart. She has lost and lost and lost, and she cannot bear the thought of losing Yuna as well. Yuna, who is in all effects her sister, as much her blood as Chappu ever was to Wakka. It is no comfort at all to know that at least she will not lose another lover this time, no comfort at all to look at Yuna and know that she will be spared an empty bed when it is over. It is no comfort, and it makes no difference.

The blow will still cut as deep, she knows, rend her as completely as Ginnem, as Chappu, as the pieces of her heart that still serrate and grate against her insides. It hurts already, before anything has happened, and all the more so because she has been here before. She has seen death twice now, has loved and lost and grieved and mourned twice. Three times would be too much. Everyone has their breaking point, she knows, and Yuna is hers. After all that she has endured, the pain and the grief and the guilt and the sorrow… it is too much. Yuna is too much.

If they must face death, Lulu thinks, she can only pray that this time it will be her own. She would sooner be lost herself than lose anyone else.

But then, of course, isn’t that the problem? The sacrifice is not hers to make; it is Yuna’s, and no amount of prayer is going to change that.

This is Lulu’s third pilgrimage as a guardian; though she has never made it that far herself, she knows precisely what awaits them in the ruins of Zanarkand. Three times she has taken up the same journey, three times she has whispered the same words, felt the same terrible things, and shed the same silent tears. It is the eternal paradox, the inevitable fate of the summoner and the knowledge that even the best guardian in Spira cannot save them. The best that a good guardian can hope for is that when their summoner dies, it will be in the right place and for the right reasons.

It hurts to think back, and it hurts to look forward. It hurts to know that Yuna will be doomed even if Lulu does give her life to keep her safe, and it hurts to know that Ginnem would have been just as doomed even if she had succeeded. It hurts to know that she would still have mourned her lady, that she would still have lost her, even if she had been older and wiser and strong enough save her from that hateful place. If she had been a better guardian, if she had been able to protect her as she was sworn to do, she would still have grieved. It would have taken a different shape, perhaps, the grief of knowing that her summoner’s sacrifice was not in vain, but it would still be grief. In the end, she would still have lost her Ginnem, and shattered the pieces of her heart that still burn and freeze for her; the only difference, really, would be that the rest of Spira would be celebrating the Calm while she mourned and wept. For Lulu, if not for them, the end result would be the same. Ginnem would still be dead. Only the method would be different.

Summoners know that their lives will end when their pilgrimage does. It would be unjust to begin such a journey without knowing that, and it is only fair that the rest of Spira knows the sacrifice their summoners make so that they might be happy for a time. Guardians know it too, and it is not the place of a guardian to tell their summoner not to tread the path they’ve chosen. It is not a guardian’s place to fall weeping at their summoner’s feet, to beg them not to sacrifice their life for Spira, to tell them that they will be missed and mourned, that their life is worth more than the countless thousands. It is a guardian’s place to keep their summoner safe, nothing more, and it is a poor guardian who lets herself forget that.

But Yuna is so young. She is even younger than Lulu was when she left on that fateful pilgrimage with her lady Ginnem, and Lulu was barely more than a child herself then. Sometimes she wonders if she still is, but then she sees Wakka, older and so much more infantile, and she thinks that perhaps she has grown up a little after all. Because she is not the same fool-hearted child she was then.

That hurts too. Remembering her own youth, and seeing it reflected in the blue and green of Yuna’s eyes. She should have been older, should have been stronger, but she was not. When it mattered, when Spira and Ginnem were depending on her, she was nothing more than a foolish little girl with her head wrapped around her heart. Oh, she was old enough to know and understand what was happening, old enough that her friends and peers did not balk at the thought of her guarding her precious Ginnem, but still so very young. So young, so ignorant, so desperate to remain by her lady’s side no matter the cost. She hadn’t thought about the pilgrimage itself at all, hadn’t stopped to question or wonder what it meant for the summoner, what it might mean for them both if they survived to the end. All she could think of was being at her lady’s side, of being with her in every way. 

Ginnem was not so young, though. She was not much older than Lulu, but that short distance often felt like a chasm between them, wisdom and experience making it seem so much wider than it was. Lady Ginnem was a summoner, and like poor Yuna, she had no choice but to grow up too fast. She knew her duty too well, knew what a pilgrimage was truly about, and she carried the weight of all that knowledge on her shoulders like a funeral shroud. Looking back now, Lulu realises that she was somewhat more a hindrance than a help; Ginnem carried the weight of her fate and with it the need to protect her young guardian from the bitter truth. Sometimes, it seemed that she was the one guarding Lulu, keeping her safe from the terrible thing they both knew but did not speak of. In so many ways, she was resigned to her fate before they ever left Besaid, but Lulu was so heart-eyed, so young and so innocent that she hadn’t seen the truth of it. Like Wakka, gazing at the skies for a glimpse of the brother he will never see again, she had only seen her lady Ginnem, so wise and worldly and wonderful.

She should have known better. She knows that now. She should have taken her duties more seriously, should have forced herself to understand and accept the truth. But she didn’t. She was a heart-eyed little girl, an innocent in love, and in her fool’s eyes a pilgrimage was a promise of adventure, of kisses stolen beneath the stars and hands held on dusty paths, of life and living. She was so young, and so utterly stupid. There is no place for heart-eyed innocence on a pilgrimage, no place for stolen kisses or held hands; there is no place for life when Spira’s fate rests with your death. There is no place on a pilgrimage for any of the things that Lulu sought when she left with Ginnem, and she has paid for those ideals every day since.

That is not a mistake she will repeat. If there was any good to come of Zuke’s failed pilgrimage, it is that the experience taught Lulu how to be a guardian, a true guardian, the kind who might stand a chance at protecting Yuna. Zuke was a dear man and a devout summoner, but she did not love him. Her heart was raw from so much loss, Ginnem and Chappu, so much in so short a time, and there was so little left of it that she couldn’t have forged another bond like that even if she’d wanted to. Zuke’s pilgrimage was a job, a duty, and she did it as best she could. She was not a perfect guardian, perhaps not even a very good one, but she was a guardian. For the first time, she knew why she was there.

In truth, she had little choice; accompanied as she was by Wakka, it naturally fell to her to be the mature one, the strong one, the one who knew and understood what was happening, what they were doing and why. Wakka, stumbling through the journey for all the wrong reasons, was as flighty as a child. In one breath he would crow about revenge and in the very next he would be wailing about blitzball; he would mourn his brother in one moment and pine for his precious game in another. He was not useless, but he was close. For his part, Zuke faltered almost from the beginning, his courage waning and wavering almost from the moment they stepped foot on the boat from Besaid. His faith was strong but his will was weak; he needed his guardians to bolster him, to fortify the parts that were so lacking, but all Wakka could think of was himself. Lulu needed to be the rational one, needed to be the adult. She needed to be the proper guardian, and though she was not quite ready then, she did her best. She understood, and she tried.

That is the mantle she will take up again now, but better, for Yuna. Young Yuna, sweet Yuna, precious and protected. Lulu may not be able to stop her from going on this ill-advised pilgrimage, may not be able to sway her from the path she has taken up, may not be able to save her from the fate that waits in Zanarkand. She may not survive another shattering of her heart, may not live beyond the moment when Yuna says her final farewell, but if it is the last thing she does, she will get her there.

Lulu knows herself. She knows who she is, what she’s done, and how she has failed. In truth, she knows, she is worth very little. She is not as deluded or blithe as Wakka, thinking that she has what it takes to change the world, to bring Spira the peace it so desperately needs. She is a young woman, as fool-hearted now as she ever was, but she is harder too. The fire and ice around that fool’s heart has become something stronger, a kind of magic that pulses in her veins, and she can protect Yuna now as she could never have protected Ginnem. She is not enough, but she is more than she was, and that is something. She can harness the pain of what she has learned through two failed pilgrimages, and she can channel the grief of two lost loves. Ginnem’s resolve fires her veins and memories of Chappu’s smile cool her aching soul. She cannot change what has happened, cannot return them to life, cannot change Zuke’s weary mind, cannot break Wakka of his delusions. She cannot unsee the things she has seen or unfeel the pain that has torn her asunder. But she can be a guardian again. And she will.

For Yuna, who would throw herself down for Spira, who would cast aside her own life for the lives of so many. For Wakka, who knows so little and believes so much. For Ginnem, that her death might not be in vain. For Chappu, that his might not be futile. For Zuke and his faltering courage, and for the peace she so desperately hopes he found.

For all of them, and for Lulu herself as well. For she who has loved and lost and mourned and grieved. For she who made mistakes. For she who finally knows what a pilgrimage is, and what it means to be a guardian. For she who understands now, for the first time, what must be done. For she who hurts, for she who aches, she with the shattered heart and the sundered soul. For she who remembers. For she who can never forget.

For love. For peace. For Spira.

And this time, perhaps, for good.


End file.
